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ELMİ MƏCMUƏSİ

№ 26●DEKABR (ARALIK) 2016

Modal verbs in old English 103

MODAL VERBS IN OLD ENGLISH

Yeganə Qaraşova BDU İlahiyyat fakultəsinin baş müəllimi

Açar sözlər: spesfik, çətin, aşkar, aydın, təsrif etmək, nümunə, misal, xüsusiyyət,

fərqlənmək, nəzəriyyə Key words: pecular, complicated, obvious, conjugation, paradigm, feature,

differ, teaching Ключевые слова: своеобразный, трудный, непокятный, ясный,

сопряжение, пример, особенность, отличаться, теория

According to Rastorgueva, Old English verb was characterized by a lot of peculiar features. For example, while the paradigm of the noun, the adjective and the pronoun was more complicated than their present forms, the OE verb paradigm was simpler: the verb had several person and number endings in OE. But it had fewer grammatical categories than Modern English (4:157).

OE verbs were synthetic. Most verb – forms of OE were distinguished through their endings: only one form – participle 2 – was often marked by the prefix Ʒe - . But some verbs were made by sound alternation, a few verbs had suppletive forms (4:165)

The majority of OE verbs divided into two large groups which were called “strong” and “weak” verbs. They were divided according to the way they built their principal forms. Let’s compare the principal forms of two verbs: the Old English strong verb “helpan”, New English “help”, and the weak verb “macian”, NE “make” (6:165)

Besides the two major groups of verbs there existed some minor groups whose conjugation differed both from the weak and the strong verb conjugation. These groups of verbs could be referred to neither weak nor strong verbs. The most interesting group of anomalous verbs was certainly the so – called preterite – presents (or past – present) verbs (4:173). In Old English there were twelve preterite – presents:

OE āƷ – NE own, “ought”; OE cunnan, can – NE can; OE dearr – NE dare; OE sculan, sceal – NE shall; OE maƷan, m□Ʒ – NE may; OE mōt “can” – NE must; Six of these verbs have survived in Modern English. These are as below: OE: āƷ; cunnan, cann, dearr, sculan, sceal; maƷan, m□Ʒ; mōt. NE: owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must.

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Most modal verbs of Modern English have descended from preterite – presents. Their present tense forms originally were Past tense forms. That is why they do not add –s in the third person Singular (4:174). According to Rastorgueva, did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of an attitude to an action denoted by Infinitive which followed the preterite – present. That’s why they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern verbs (4:122).

There were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms among the verb of minor groups.

OE “willan” was an irregular verb which expressed the meaning of volition and desire. It looked like the preterite – presents verbs in meaning and function. So, it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an Infinitive. The past form of the verb “willan” was “wolde”. Eventually “willan” became a modal verb like other survived preterite – presents verbs (4:123).

The present tense of the preterite – presents verbs corresponds to the past of strong verbs, while their past is derived according to the past of weak verbs. Thus in OE the present tense of the verb “witan” (know) is “wāt” for a singular and “witon” for the plural. But its past form is “wisse” or “wiste” (3:100).

In old English, not wholly unlike present – day English, we can divide verbs up into three main groups, together with a handful of irregular verbs. The main groups are: (1) weak verbs; (2) strong verbs; (3) modals. But there are significant general differences which should be pointed out at once.

The present – day English category of modals sits only uncomfortably into Old English. This is perhaps particularly true in terms of morphology. Historically speaking, the verbs which we call “modals” almost all belonged to a group which is called preterite – present verbs. Such verbs originally had a preterite or past tense morphology but this morphology had acquired a present tense meaning. If we take a typical such verb, cunnan “can, know”, then it is possible to observe that it has many of the features which would be normally associated with a class III verb such as singan. In particular it can be pbserved that forms such as cann “I know” and cunnon “we know” relate in form to the past tense forms sang and sungon respectively. Even in present – day English we find he can and this lacks the final inflectional –s which we expect to find with every 3rd person singular verb; the lack of final –s is something that today we still associate only with strong verb past tense forms, as in sang “he sang”.

Because these preterite – present verbs had forms which were preterite in form but present in meaning, they had to find new past tense forms from somewhere. The solution to this was to form a new tense using the dental suffix associated with the weak verbs, although in a somewhat altered, and not always well understood, formation.

One obvious result of all this is that the preterite – present forms look rather irregular, both in their (new) present and past tense morphologies, and cannot easily be classified in a homogenous fashion. The other difficulty they present use with is

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the confusion which arises between morphological form and morphological content. Another way of putting this would be to describe this as the confusion between preterite - presents and modals, for the point is that not every preterite – present has modal features, and equally not every modal was a preterite – present verb. Add to this the fact that the modal category is not particularly robust in Old English, with some verbs showing modal syntactic features and others showing only semantic indications, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the situation is a mess. It has tobesaid however, that much of the mess is of our own devising, and reflects the results of attempting to use a nomenclature which can be shared between Old and present – day English. There is judgement to be made about whether or not this is wise, and although the nomenclature does seem preferable, nevertheless a “health warning” needs to be issued (5:65).

There were finite and non – finite forms. The non – finite forms were the Infinitive and the Participle (I and II). There was no Gerund.

a) The Infinitive in OE was a verbal noun and belonged to the weak –en stem declension.

b) The Participle was a verbal adjective. Like any adjective – it had the category of agreement. It agreed with its noun gender, number and case. As to the formation, PI was formed from the present item with the suffix –ende, -ande. As to PII, its formation depended on the type of the verb.

These were four types of conjugation: two major types and two minor types. The two major: the strong conjugation and the weak conjugation. A strong verb had four main forms: - the infinitive -Preterit singular first and third person – the second person singular and all the persons of the plural and the past subjunctive –Participle II. There are seven classes of strong verbs. The gradation was based on: in the first 5 classes the basis was the ablaut or the “e-o” gradation: “e-o- zero”. Different gradations resulted as an interaction. The vowels of gradation and the phonetic conditions of the root I. Writan –wrat –writon – writen. The sixth class featured quantative gradation. “o-o” (in IE) o+ a o+ a scacal –scoc (shake) taka –tok (take). The last seventh class featured reduplication of the root (fall, let) lailait (in the Gothic language) In the OE the two parts into one root.

The weak verbs had three main forms: -the infinitive –the Preterite –Participle II. The weak verbs formed three forms by means of a dental suffix. The suffix of the weak verbs later turned into the standard suffix –ed. In Germanic languages there were four weak classes, in OE we find three weak classes. In the first weak class we find three subclasses: weak verbs with the short root syllable (neriat – nered – nered). Weak verbs with the long syllable variants (fedan – fedde – fedd). Irregular verbs ( to think – thought – thought, to tell – told – told). Taljan> tellan. All the verbs of the first weak class are derivatives with the help of the suffix –jan which caused palatal mutation in the root. However in the Preterite of the third subgroup the suffix was dropped. That is why there was no palatal mutation in the Preterite. The same is true of the gradation man – men, that is they went through palatal mutation in the plural

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manniɜ > men. The second weak class was the most regular one. It had no exceptions –ode (Prater) –od (P. II) love: luvian – luvode – luvod It served as the basis for the future development of the standard verbs. The third class was not numerous and it was in the state of decay. In ME: to have, to live, to say (different models) habban - hɜbde - hɜbd. There were also two minor types of conjugation. –Preterit –Present Verbs – Suppletive Verbs The Preterit – Present Verbs were originally strong verbs belonging to certain classes, then for some semantic reasons their old past came to be used as the present tense form after which a new Preterite form was formed according to the weak type as the productive. There have given us modal verbs: dare, must, may, should, shall, can, ought. Cunnan (inf. ) – can. Suppletive verbs: There have always been two suppletive verbs: to be, to go. “To be” in the OLD ENGLISH PERIOD had two present paradigms to be – bist (bhen IE) am (es IE) “to go”: OE ɜan – ecde . later the preterite “ecde” was replaced by the Preterite “wendte” (wendan = wander). The categories: 7 grammatical categories in the ME language, but tere were 4 categories in OE: tense: Present\ Preterit Mood (Indicative, Imper. , Subj. ) Person Number Cepan (keep) Ic cepe n cepst he cep Other categories were only beginning to develop (voice, aspect, phase, etc. )

Some verbs in Old English (and other Germanic languages) underwent a regular change in meaning with consequent morphological evolution; in particular, the preterite forms of certain strong verbs came to have present – tense meanings, and in order to convey preterite sense these verbs acquired new, weak past – tense inflectional endings. These are called preterite – present verbs. These verbs, at all not more than seven, are nowadays called modal verbs in English, and they are organized into classes depending on the ablaut patterns of their forebears. For example, certain verbs in Strong Class III gave rise to Preterite – Present Class III verbs. The evolutionary change may be described as follows:

1. the old infinitive, gerund, imperative, and all present forms were lost; 2. the old p preterite singular form (with 2nd ablaut vowel intact) was then used

for the new present 1st \ 3rd person singular; 3. the old preterite plural stem (with 3rd ablaut vowel intact) was then used in the

new infinitive, gerund, imperative, and remaining present forms; 4. the old past participle stem (with 4th ablaut vowel intact) was then used for the

new preterite forms, which acquired weak (-d or –t) endings; 5. the old past participle, unchanged, retained its grammatical role. N. B. By no means do we imply a strict evolutionary sequence, 1 – 4! It is merely

simpler to describe the end results in this way. Also the preterite – present verb paradigms, despite the seemingly complete “rules” (above) used in reconstruction, are in practice seldom fully attested; hence such reconstructions must be taken with the usual grain of salt.

There are four principal parts of every preterite – present verb; these are always its infinitive, its 3rd person present singular, its present plural, and its preterite singular;

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the past participle is not included because, from these four forms, one may construct the complete conjugation.

The preterite > present evolution, whatever the historical details, affected certain verbs in Strong Verb Classes I – VI; a number of these verbs became modals, exemplified by modern English “can”, “could”, “may”, “might”, “should”, etc.

Present – Preterite verbs have their Present tense forms generated from the Strong Past, and the Past tense, instead, looks like the Present Tense of the Weak verbs. The main difference of verbs of this type in modern English is their expressing modality, i. e. possibility, obligation, necessity. They do not require the particle before the infinitive. In fact, this to before the infinitive form meant the preposition of direction.

And now finally a few irregular verbs, which used several different stems for their tenses. These verbs are very omportant in Old English and are met very often in the texts: wesan (to be), béon (to be), gán (to go), dón (to do), willan (will). Mind that there was no Future tense in the Old English language, and the future action was expressed by the Present forms, just sometimes using verbs of modality, willan (lit. “to wish to do”) or sculan (lit. “to have to do”).

The development of the modals in the history of English has received a great deal of attention since the seventies, kindled and inspired as it was by the work of David Lightfoot (4, 30). Most of these studies have focused on the transition of the core modals (i. e. shall, will, must, may, can) from full – verb to auxiliary status, and most indeed agree that there was a development in this direction. In Old English, the core modals still sported full – verb meaning (e. g. sceal was still also used in the sense of “to owe”, willan in the sense of “want, desire”, mot in the sense of “to have power, to have the opportunity” etc. ) and most of them could still be used in most morphological forms and in most of the syntactic positions of full verbs. However, Lightfoot’s idea of a “radical re – analysis”, which he assumed the modals to have undergone, also led to many reactions, as can be seen primarily from the reviews of his 1979 book (see especially 4, 49) and from the reaction in Plank 1984. It could be said, indeed, that the articles brought together in this collection are a further outcome of this reaction. As against the idea of a radical re – analysis, there existed the view that the process was much more gradual, and this idea was resurrected under the more general umbrella of grammaticalization theory, which became very popular in the eighties. According to this view, the changes that the core – modals underwent were only one part of a “modality cycle”, which repeats itself again and again. This cycle involves not only (modal) verbs but also (modal) adverbs and elements in frequent collocation with the modals. In addition, the process is not merely driven by the syntax (as in Lightfoot’s proposal of a radical reanalysis) but also semantically and first and foremost pragmatically.

Let us look briefly at what happened. The scene was set by the fact that the original Old English synthetic subjunctive forms became opaque (because of syncretism with indicative forms in the late OE and early ME period) and were no longer “expressive” enough. The already existing modal verbs (often termed “pre –

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modals”, because they lacked many of the properties associated with the present – day modals), such as cunnan “can”, sceal “shall” and magan “may”, slowly began to take their place. They gradually lost their full – verb (their lexical) meanings and became restricted to deontic, dynamic and epistemic uses. As a consequence, they lost some of their morphological features (i. e they lost infinitival, participial and “pure” tense forms) and no longer occurred in a number of previously regular syntactic structures. This, in turn, led to a new cycle, i. e. the introduction of what are often called “quasi” modal verbs, such as ought to, have to, be able to etc. to fill the syntactic gaps that the core modals had left.

Apart from being enlisted as modality markers, some core modals also began to function in the tense system. Thus, we witness the development of “future” markers with the modals shall and will in the early Middle English period. These originally dynamic and\ or deontic modals developed, probably through some kind of pragmatic inferencing or double modal marking, into more general “future” markers expressing possibility or strong likelihood. Traugott describes this process as follows: “One of the conditions for the extension of the scul– of obligation to prediction may have been its use in sentences such as (1) where the modal adverb niede stresses the obligation.

E. G. (1) Ic sceal eac niede ƥara monegena gewinna geswigian […] I must\ shall also of – necessity of – those many battles be – silent. “I must also necessarily be silent about those many battles.” (6:196) What happens here is that the notion of necessity gets, as it were, doubly

expressed, whixh allows the modal of “obligation” sceal to become bleached into a “weaker” future modal. It could also be said that scuh examples show that the modal meaning was already weakening, and needed reinforcement by adverbials such as niede – this is a typical feature of grammaticalization processes. I have found as many as twenty – six collocations on the Old English on – line corpus with sceal and n (i)ede(nga), showing that this is clearly a frequent combination. The next step in the development towards a future marker is that shall and will come to be used in contexts where future reference may need reinforcing, thus backgrounding the original modality even further. The last stage would be the complete grammaticalization of the future tense marker. This stage has not been fully reachedin present – day English, but there has been a steady increase over time in the contexts requiring future marking. Nowadays, the use of the present tense is virtually restricted to clauses which are already clearly marked for the future by other means (e. g. we find the present used instead of the future in conditional clauses where the main clause has a future tense), or when the future event is seen as or considered to be pretty definite, i. e. seen “subjectively” by the speaker as if it is the present. In Old English, the present tense was the rule in all future contexts, sometimes supported by a “futural” adverb or phrase, and in Middle English we still come across many examples without a grammatical future marker, where such a marker would now be obligatory. Thus, in the following example from Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, For after this I hope their cometh more.

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There is no future marking in spite of the fact that the kisses that he subject (the feeble “courtly” lover Absolon) hopes for are rather unlikely. In present – day English some marker would be usual here, as indeed the literal but excellent prose translation by David Wright shows: (3) […] for there’ll be more to come after this, I hope. (5:71)

Let us return to the larger picture, the “modality cycle” and to what happened in Old English. The modality cycle in many resembles what Jespersen (11:19) has called the “negative cycle”. Just as the negative element is typically connected with the verb and indeed placed close to the verb. Modality itself can be subdivided into dynamic, deontic (together also called “root” modality) and epistemic modality, whereby the first two are agent – oriented and the last is speaker – oriented (expressing the role the speaker wants the proposition to play in the discourse). The most interesting cyclic developments concern epistemic modality because epistemic modals almost invariably derive deontic and dynamic modals, and it is via this path that the original modal verbs may grammaticalize into auxiliaries, clitics and affixes on the verb. We could see the OE subjunctive affixes, therefore, as the end of a modality cycle, and the use of root modals (or modal adverbs) in place of subjunctives as the beginning of a new cycle. Typical in all grammaticalization processes is the need for reinforcement of the meaningful element (in this case the “mood” element) once it has been bleached through frequency of use and economy of speech. Just as in the negative cycle the bleached preverbal clitic ne became reinforced by post – verbal adverbs such as nawigh, ncefre etc. , in the same way mood became reinforced with the help of adverbs. It is noteworthy that in Old English, the new modal markers were often used in the subjunctive, expressing double modality, as it were, just like the double negatives ne ...nawiht\ nfre.

The development became also necessary due to the loss of distinction in finite verbal forms that began in OE and resulted in the present – day situation where we have only three finite verb forms left, the stem, the stem + s and the past tense form. Another aspect of this shift concerns the expression of epistemic modality. When the modals slowly grammaticalized from full verbs into verbal satellites due to their replasing the subjunctive, they also began to enter the epistemic or discourse domain, taking the place of, again, the subjunctive and of earlier lexical markers of epistemic modality. It is noteworthy that the epistemic subjunctive survived longer in main clauses in Old English than the deontic and dynamic ones, which already had been reduced to subordinate positions.

Having looked at the changes in the way the function of modality was expressed in earlier English, and especially at the relation between subjunctive and modal verbs, we must now consider the modal verbs themselves and the changes that took place there. The “modal story” is particularly interesting because the original modal verbs have changed much more radically in English than in any of its sister languages. In English the modals have developed into what Warner (5:49) has called “anaphorical islands”, i. e. they show an “independent ‘word – like’ status”, with non – transparent morphology, in contrast to full verbs which have transparent morphological

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inflections of person and tense. The modals in other Germanic languages, on the other hand, have retained most of their verbal features. Additionally the story is of theoretical interest because it has been used to support generative linguistic view of change whereby certain grammar changes may have been ‘radical’, i. e. it illustrates the idea that seemingly unrelated changes on the surface may be related to one, deeper and more abstact change in the base. Such evidence is important, since it may not only tell us more about how syntactic change takes place, but it may also serve as empirical evidence for the existence of such an abstract rule system. More particularly it may give an indication of the degree of abstractness of this system, and more generally it may tell us more about the extent of the role the theory of grammar plays in change.

The idea of a radical change, as noted above, was first proposed by David Linhgtfoot, who saw the modals as a paradigm case. Lightfoot’s story briefly is as follows. In old and Middle English the core modals willan, sculan, magan, motan and cunnan behaved like any other verb, and there is no reason to assume that they belonged to a special category, set apart from the category Verb. The descendants of these modals in Present – day English, will, shall, may, must and can, on the other hand, are no longer verbs, but must be considered to belong to a separate category, namely Aux(iliary). Thus the so- called pre – modals could occur in positions where they now no longer occur^ they could be used in both finite and non – finite position, they could be found on their own with a direct object NP or complement clause, and they could be combined with another modal.

In the course of the Old and Middle English periods a number of “unrelated” changes took place that isolated the pre – modals from the other verbs (5: 101 – 109):

I. the pre – modals lost the ability to take direct objects II. the pre – modals were the only preterite – present verbs left, all others of this

class were lost III. the past tense forms of the pre – modals no longer signal past time reference IV. the pre – modals alone take a bare infinitive, all other verbs sart taking to

infinitive. These changes Lightfoot believes to be unrelated because they are accidental

(especially I and IV, which concern the behavior of verbs other than the pre – modals) and\or because they do not happen at the same time. The changes had a common effect, however, in that they resulted in the isolation of the pre – modals: they became “identifiable as a unique class” (5:109). The evidence for this category change is to be found in the fact that the pre – modals now underwent a second phase of changes, which were realeted and which did take place simultaneously (5:110):

(a) the old pre – modals could no longer appear in infinitival constructions (b) the old pre – modals could no longer occur as present participles (c) the old pre – modals could no longer occur as past participles (d) the old pre – modals could no longer occur in combination (with the exception

of some dialects, such as e. g. Modem Scots)

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The simultaneity of these changes, according to Lightfoot, provides evince that a deep, radical change must have taken place in the abstract system, which dissolved the verbal status of the pre – modals (i. e. they because a new category, that of Auxiliary) and thus forced the four characteristics given above upon them. The simultaneity, therefore, is crucial.

Another aspect that has been questioned is whether the changes in (10) are really unrelated and accidental. If we strat from the assumption, as many linguists do, that already in Old English the premodals were set apart from other verbs as a group, then the changes under (10) can easily be seen as related. Already in OE the past tense modals could be used to express present time modality, so in that respect they differed from “normal” verbs. As to verbal complementation, not so very much changes here. In Old English there was only a resfricted class of verbs that could take a bare infinitive. This class comprised the modals, verbs of physical perception (‘see’, ‘hear’), causatives (OE Icetan, biddan, hatari) and impersonal verbs. With a few exceptions (i. e. there were some verbs that could take both bare and to – infinitives: e. g. pencan ‘think’ in OE, and in ME also helpen, makeri), all other verbs took only/ o – infinitival complements. There is no evidence thet the to – infinitive encroached on the domain of the bare infinitive in ME. It is true that the to – infinitive became much more frequent in Middle English, but this is due to the fact that it started replacing that – clauses; the distribution of the bare infinitive itself remaining relatively unaffected in Middle English (45:55). As to the loss of all other preterite – present verbs, Harris and Campbell write (14:179): “But if auxiliary variants of the modal verbs already existed, it was the entire class of preterite – present verbs that was lost, and it was no accident.” Indeed, if the pre – modals were already looked upon as a subgroup in Old English, then this very fact may have pushed the other preterite – present verbs out of the system. Harris and Campbell suggest that the modals in Old English fell into two homophonous categories, one an auxiliary and the other a fully lexical verb. The Old English examples given in (9), in fact, illusfrate this well: thus the infinitive cunnen (9b), the present participle willende (9c), sceolde with a direct object (9e) and wille with a object clause (9f) are all examples of the pre – modals used with full referential or lexical meaning. When the modals began to play a more important and frequent role in the ME period due to the loss of the subjunctive, it was the homophonous lexical pre – modal that began ti die out, while the truly modal pre – modals developed further, at first still maintaining their verbal status, but gradually developing into more independent “word – like” elements. In this connection, it is interesting to observe that the Middle English increase with the development of periphrastic constructions to express the future and the perfect. The pre – modals (which were, after all, auxiliary – like too) were caught up in this, forming combinations with the auxiliaries of tense and aspect (just as they had combined with the auxiliaries of the passive in Old English), and we see constructions such as shall, may and have mought occurring. The subsequent disappearance of these infinitival and participial forms presumably has to do with the fact thay they were

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awkward to begin with (they were rare to non – existent in Old English), and with the fact that he homophonous lexical modals, which could have given support to these non – finite forms, had become truly separated from their sisters (indeed they all eventually became obsolescent). Another problem may well have been that the modals’ tense forms were already used in Old English as modality markers, i. e. they were not strict members of the tense system. This non – tense characteristic became reinforced in ME with the loss of the subjunctive, and the subsequent rise of indicative past tense modal markers to take their place. In other words, the modals did not sit well in a system of tense or aspect, and this made the combination with perfect HAVE and future SHALL difficult. Finally, the order of the auxiliary verbs presumably plays a role in this development as well, as suggested by Warner (12:79). With the loss of tense distinctions in the modals, and the increasing grammaticalization of the core modals in the late ME period, we begin to witness the start of a new cycle, as mentioned above, i. e. we see the rise of new ‘quasi’ modals. Some of these indeed, notably have to, have themselves again grammaticalized. Have to is now also used epistemically, and have got\ has got (often reduced to got), is now finite only, and so are other new modals such as had\’d rather and (had\’d) better.

To sum up, the evindence for assuming that there was only one homogeneous verbal category in Old English, which included the premodals, as suggested by lightfoor, is not all that strog. It is not the case that the pre – modals developed more and more exception features in the Old and Middle English period; they were exceptional within the category of verbs to start with but they retaind their verbal status, certainly still in Middle English, After the ME period they became isolated more and more, losing the trappings of full verbs in the process, but this happened slowly and not in the same way and at the same rate for each pre – modal. It may be that the pre – modals have become so opaque as verbs that it is hard if not impossible to pinpoint when such a change should have taken place, and indeed when it took place for each separate verb. It is clear that synchronically, within the verbal class there is a continuum running from full verbs to auxiliary – like verbs, where all the different features available (verbal and less – than – verbal) are distributed unevenly across the original pre – modals, semi – modals and other auxiliary – like verbs such as perfect HAVE, passive BE, DO etc. This synchronic picture is the result of an uneven diachronic development.

All the papers in this volume are interested in this ‘uneven’ development, in the nitty – gritty, in other words, not (yet) in any overall picture, and they all attempt to throw more light on the behavior of modal verbs in order to finally reach a more refined overall view. The period taken into consideration is the late ME and early Modem period, which spans the time in which many of the more crucial changes took place. The contributions are thus all geared towards an understanding of the modals in use, in their context. They also show in detail what factors other than syntactic (and semantic) ones may have played a role in the development of the modals. The investigation of the modals from a sociolinguistic and a pragmatic, speech-act point

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of view fill in some of the gaps left by Lightfoot’s description of a radical, syntactic change. They show that change can only be explained within a larger framework, taking into consideration the language system and the context in which the language system is used, where context includes both the social and the communicative situation in which the utterances take place. In addition, putting the modal story in a diachronic perspective may be of help in getting a better sense of what kind of ‘animal’ auxiliaries are synchronically. A recent account of the grammaticalization of lexical verbs or verb – group into auxiliaries indeed stresses the difficulty of deciding what counts as an auxiliary. In her book on Auxiliation, Tania Kuteva (13:6) writes, kuteva emphasizes that most optimal way to account for the complexity and behavior of auxiliaries is to observe them in language use as “an activity or process rather than a state or product” (13:6). This is in fact what was lacking in Lightfoot’s account. Even though his is a diachronic account of the English modal verbs, it is in fact an account based on ‘slices of synchrony’, not on the dynamics of the change itself. It thus ignores the dynamics present in the synchronic variation at each stage. Studies, such as the ones collected in this volume, are an attempt to fill this gap.

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THE LIST OF USED LITERATURE

IN AZERBAIJANI 1. Aslanov A. Ə. (1957). “Müasir Azərbaycan dilində modal sözlər”, Nizami

adına Ədəbiyyat və Dil İnstitutunun əsərləri, X cild. 2. Aslanov A. Ə, (1960), “Modal sözlər, Azərbaycan dilinin qrammatikası”,

Azərbaycan SSR EA nəşriyyatı. 3. Cahangirov F. (2005), “İngilis və Azərbaycan dillərində modallığın struktur –

semantik tədqiqi”, Bakı. IN ENGLISH 4. Aitchison J. (1980), Rewiev on Lightfoot 1979, Linguistics 18. 5. Allen C. (1975), “Old English Modals”, Umass Ocasional Papers in

Linguistics. 6. Auwera J. , Plungian V. (1998), “Modality’s semantic map”, Linguistic

Typology 7. Biber D. , Stig J. , Leech G. , Conrad S. , and Finegan E. (1999), “The Longman

grammar of spoken and written English”, London: Person Education. 8. Bybee J. (1985), “Morphology: A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and

Form”, Amestrerdam: Benjamins. 9. Bybee J. , Fleischman S. (1995), “Modality in grammar and discourse”: An

introductory essay. In: Bybee J. , Fleischman S. (Eds. ) “Modality In Grammar and Didcourse”, Benjamins, Amsterdam.

10. Bybee J. , Pagliuca W. , Perkins R. D. (1991), “Back to the Future”, Approaches to Grammaticaliation. Vol. II: Focus on Types of Grammatical Markers, eds.

11. Palmer F. R. , Modality and the English modals, London – New York: Longman, 1979

12. WARNER, Anthony. English Auxiliaries: Structure and History, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 66. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.

13. Tania Kuteva with Bernd Heine 2012. An integrative model of grammaticalizatio". In: Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs 242. 159-190.

Modal verbs in old English 115

XÜLASƏ

Bu məqalə ingilis dilində modal fellərin tarixinə həsr olunub. Xüsusən müxtəlif

dövrlərdə modal fellərin mənası və xarakteristikası işıqlandırılıb. Modal fellərin öyrənilməsi ingilis dilində ən çətin bölmələrdən biridir.

SUMMER

This article is about the history of the modal verbs in the English language. It focuses on various meaning or characteristics of modal verbs in different periods. Teaching and learning English modal verb is one of the most complicated and difficult parts in language teaching.

РЕЗЮМЕ

Данная статья посвящена истории модальных глаголов в английском языке. Особо освящаются значение и характеристики модальных глаголов в различные периоды. Изучение модальных глаголов явлается одним из самых сложных разделов в обучении языку.

Çapa tövsiyə etdi: dos. A. Q. Abbasov